


In Vino Veritas

by skivvery



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Heavy Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-16 21:50:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5842240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skivvery/pseuds/skivvery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"No one gave her much credit for anything, but if there was one thing Delphine Cormier could claim for herself (and there were several, truly, though she was humble enough not to brag – when sober), it was willpower."</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Vino Veritas

**Author's Note:**

> This is the product of some narrative experimentation at midnight in regards to that scene in which Delphine is shown drinking while doing that semi-stalking thing of hers (in 3x06, I think?). Also, please don't drink irresponsibly :)

Wine used to be her poison of choice, and only occasionally – sips and sips of fine liver-eating alcohol here and there, nights out, alone at home, once or twice in bed with Cosima, a prelude in Cabernet Sauvignon.

Leekie didn't storage drinks in his office and neither did she when she first set foot in it as its new proprietor. But, oh, the tides change, if only the moon enters a new cycle, and moonlight had befallen Delphine Cormier too; even the gold waves of her hair had become a river (though to assume that a river is less furious than an ocean is foolish), flowing down her rigid back, donned in black. The tides change and water turns to wine turns to whisky turns to rum to vodka in her glass. All of a sudden there were bottles and bottles in there with her, the most loyal of servants, ever present, spanning from blue curaçao to green mint liquor, red labels, black labels, buckets of ice.

She wasn't aware of when it had started (yes, she was, love can only hold so many people before it begins to corrode the very heart that birthed it) or how to create the right drinks; she was a doctor, not a mixologist – neither was she all that happy at the head of the corporation, though a couple of pints would erase that discomfort for a little while –, but in went ounces of this and ounces of that into the wrong type of glass. Albeit, really, as long as the glass was getting full, it would always be right. She could as easily get someone to come and prepare her drinks for her, slices of orange or lemon, sugar-coated rims and cherries to finish off, but that would mean putting away all of those files and pictures for even a second and she had no time to spare when it came to keeping a promise, as much of a toll it was on her. Besides, though Delphine enjoyed drinking (always had), she didn't enjoy intoxication, so if she must be intoxicated (and sometimes she truly must if she is to stomach martyrdom), then let her gulp down fire for all it was worth. It was her own money going down her throat, anyway, not DYAD's; the bottles were purchased with her own salary, not with institutional budget (unlike Rachel's shoes and anything else the cyclops owned), she could swallow it down however she damn well pleased – or needed to, for unlike how it used to be with wine, there was no pleasure to derive from any part of this.

Just numbness. Or an effect of it; the alcohol was supposed to shut down whatever it was she felt surveying those photographs of Alison Hendrix, Cosima Niehaus, Rachel Duncan – her _subjects_ , mind. Each invoked something she didn't have. Authority (she knew her own had an expiration date and it was coming soon), family (oh, the only child estranged from her parents should be used to it by now, she knew, but knowledge and acceptance aren't synonyms for a reason), someone to lean on (for even if, as she suspected, Shay Davydov wasn't as pristine as Cosima stupidly believed her to be, it was still someone to come back to, someone to kiss your wounds at night; meanwhile, Delphine's scars remain open and ignored, sore and bleeding). Alcohol was supposed to bury the acute perception of this general lacking, of what she had had to give away (and in the name of what?)

Most nights, it only deadened the feeling in her legs, leaving her to wobble back home (she found she was actually uncannily good at driving drunk), her cold, empty, stale home. When she _did_ go home, that is. Delphine had already arranged for clothes of hers to be kept in the office in the occasion of dozing off upon her desk, only to awaken early morning on the next day, a large glass containing the remains of the night's scotch on one hand, a picture of 324b21 and Shay glued to her cheek. Whenever that happened, and it happened much more often than she'd like, she downed whatever was left in her glass despite the conditions, despite her ever-growing heartburn, and waited, _willing_ away the headache and the vomit rising.

No one gave her much credit for anything, but if there was one thing Delphine Cormier could claim for herself (and there were several, truly, though she was humble enough not to brag – when sober), it was willpower.

Strange, then, that she couldn't drink wine anymore. That she could see it and identify it (an alcoholic beverage as potent and as damaging as any of the others she had been ingesting if taken in the right amounts), _want_ it and still freeze just by laying eyes upon that one bottle amidst her new collection, the one with the most familiar label. The oldest of them, in order of acquisition.

This wine wasn't remarkable for its vintage, nor for its origin, not even its price – Delphine didn't know how much it had cost, she didn't buy it. This bottle of wine, at the forefront of her stock, half-empty, had been snatched by Cosima eons ago, before they had kissed for the first time, before Delphine herself knew what Cosima ultimately meant to her apart from being the pet in a Petri dish she was trusted to monitor. She could smell the alcohol in her breath when she coughed out a small laugh; how clueless she had been then, how innocent the pair of them.

She swivelled her chair to face the city night lights, give herself a break from all the work, all the data, all the smiles and snuggles in the pictures, from the wine bottle staring back up at her in derision.

Willpower. What a lark.

In the window reflection she could see her tired eyes, the insistent bags beginning to form under them. She saw the bottle of wine, the errors of her past, the burden of her choices (had she ever chosen anything, honestly? Or just been dragged by the current to smash first on these rocks and then on those?)... And she thirsted. Dizzy and foul-breathed as she was, she needed disinfecting, even if by the same manner she had been tainted. Disinfecting, yes, for she had rolled too many names, too many dreams over on her tongue today, her palate wanted cleansing.

Dreams. Life had been a dream, once, when she was bright and up and coming, when her bed wasn't always empty. She even missed Cosima's fits of coughing in the middle of the night as part of her dream life (who the fuck had she become?)

They were gone now. All that was left was that wine getting older inside that damn bottle whose glass was littered with Cosima's fingerprints all over, maybe traces of her saliva still lingering dry somewhere on the mouth. That bottle was half-empty with the dreams they both shared before this virus started to grow between them; liquid images, burgundy touches, demi-sec promises, all mixed in with the blood of finely-picked grapes.

She loved still. That bottle was her testimony. A beacon of hope.

Or a bitter reminder of failure.

Delphine lurched over to her cabinet, took it in her hands, turned it over, memorized the words on the label, examining it closely from under heavy eyelids. Dreams! It was just wine, and a cheap one at that, no reason to have it haunting her for months on end. It was alcohol.

And she thirsted.

Off came the cork and up went the bottom. She drank from the mouth without bothering for a glass, without bothering for air. Ah, the deadliest venom, always in the sweetest of forms. There was a reason why she had always preferred wine; that sweet turned bitter sophisticated flame running down the tongue, the sensation of boiling velvety beetles swarming down one's throat to pile up as lava in the stomach... !

There, she thought, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, scoffing at the photograph of the woman she had loved holding hands with another on top of her desk, the dreams are gone. That lousy wine and bottle could stop provoking her now.

But she didn't throw it away. The next day she was as attentive as ever to her charges – all of them, Rachel included, Cosima included –, as dedicated and passionate as always, a young doctor in love with taking care of every new patient. The bottle stood in evidence as ever while the others were slowly consumed and not replaced. Empty it stood.

Though, depending on the angle Delphine looked at it from her chair, strangely, the bottle seemed as if it could be full to the brim.


End file.
